History Unplugged Podcast

The term "slave trade" conjures up images of a white slaver capturing African tribesmen, packing them like corkwood into a ship, selling them in the Antebellum South, and having a plantation owner work them to death. in the process, millions were stripped of their most basic rights as humans and suffered the worst form of indignation. But such massive levels of slavery did not begin with the European discovery of the New World. In the Middle Ages, Vikings went on numerous slave raids of England and Eastern Europe, selling those capture on Volga slave markets. Arab slave traders purchased millions of Africans and sent them to the Middle East to work on cotton and sugar cane plantations in Iraq.Middle Eastern intellectuals argued that Africans were at a lower mental level than Arabs and thus of a suitable condition to be enslaved (to be fair, they thought the same of Scandinavians). Slaves were humiliated at markets in Cairo where they were stripped naked to be examined by potential buyers. And Africans were taken from their homeland where they would be shipped East to Cairo, Syria, Iraq, India, and even all the way out to Indonesia.Slavery is much older than we think but sadly universally cruel.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When asked “what is slavery?” most Americans or Westerners would respond with a description of an African slave in the antebellum South, picking cotton and suffering under the whip of a cruel master. But if you asked an Irishman in 1650, he would have answered differently. He would recount the horrors of Barbary Muslim pirates invading the town of Baltimore, dragging his kinsmen off to the slave markets of Algeria. A medieval Arab would have still answered differently. He would talk about the African slave trade, albeit the one that went east to Arabia instead of the one that went west to the New World. A Roman would answer differently again, describing slavery as the rightful spoils of war and what brought a Greek to his household that tutors his children. Slavery goes back to the beginning of the agricultural revolution. It is universal yet localized to the particular conditions in the society that enslaves others. Some researchers think slavery is common across history in that it leads to the social death of a slave. Others think that slaves were treated rather well in the ancient world, and it was only the weaponized racism of recent centuries that turned the chattel slavery of Africans brought to the New World into such a cruel institution. This episode is the beginning of a five-part series on slavery. We are looking at the origins of the practice, why it began, the work that slaves did, what was the “best” sort of work, and how they revolted. By looking into the past we will have a better understanding of this practice, and how much it resembles slavery in the modern world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America has a strange relationship with alcohol. Certain drinks represented the darkest parts of the national psyche. Rum was once associated with slavery because sugar cane plantations that made rum were only profitable with chattel slavery. Whisky and hard cider were omnipresent in the 19th century, turning able-bodied men into drunkards who couldn't support their families and left them to starve.But it was Prohibition that is strangest of all. America successfully outlawed alcohol, the first and only modern nation to do so. The unintended consequences were enormous: from physicians falsifying alcohol's positive effects so they could write prescriptions for “medicine” and make a handsome profit, to record numbers of men converting to Judaism so they could administer alcohol in rabbinical ceremonies.Here to untangle the Gordion knot of alcohol in America's past is Cody Wheat from the Shots of History Podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to an anthology episode where I ask six short questions about the Middle Ages from you, the listener. Here they are in order of appearance:What Did People Eat in the Middle Ages?How Did You Conquer a Castle?Could You Tell Me About Harold Hardrada?Why is Thomas Becket Still So ImportantDid Rome Fall Because Christianity Made it Soft?Did Any African Explorers Come to Europe or Asia in the Middle Ages?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cable news pundits tell you everything is “breaking news.” TV pundits discuss politics in a vacuum. But in nearly every case, the politics of today have long roots in history. This includes media celebrities winning elections by manipulating the press and lobbing gross insults (Huey Long in the 1920s), breakdowns in the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico (the 1840s Mexican-American War) and fears of presidential executive overreach (the 1780s with George Washington).In this episode I talk with Bruce Carlson, host of the My History Can Beat Up Your Politics podcast about how nearly every issue in U.S. politics has an analogue in the past. He uses history to elevate the discussion of today's politics.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The © symbol (or "Copyright") is a completely forgettable character ignored by all but lawyers. It is buried at the bottom of legal notices that your brain reflexively skips over. But this little symbol represents a war that has raged for centuries between authorities that want to restrict dangerous information, publishers that want to profit by it, artists that want to stop plagiarists, and open-information activists that want to make everything public domain.In this episode I look at the history of copyright, the battle over how much information should cost. What is the line between protecting the rights of publishers and artists so they can make a living, and depriving society of crucial information and sentencing them to ignorance and illiteracy?The battle includesVenetian Printer Aldus Manutius, who invented Italic font in 1500s Venice. He complained of French plagiarists, who copied his techniques in order to trick book buyers, even though “[t]he lettering, upon closer inspection, betrays a certain Frenchiness” and were “produced on foul paper, ‘with [a] strange odor.”Miguel Cervantes, who battled unauthorized sequels to Don Quixote by inserting those characters into his actual sequel and mocking them.England's Statue of Anne, the first copyright law that inadvertently led to a cartel of London book publishers who artificially limited production and drove book prices through the roof.America's lax prosecution of illegal printers of British literature, leading to a boom in education.Aaron Swart'z 2010 hack of MIT's network in order to illegally download five million academic articles and “liberate” them to the InternetSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Sedgwick discusses the longstanding feud between Cherokee chiefs John Ross and the Ridge, leading to the tragic Trail of Tears. The contrasting upbringings of the leaders, political power struggles, and cultural complexities within the Cherokee Nation are explored, shedding light on the impact of their rivalry on the collapse of the tribe.

Norman Borlaug and Robert Noyce aren't household names. But these two Iowans influenced the 20th century more than anyone else on Planet Earth. Borlaug created drought and disease-resistant varieties of wheat that thrived in poor soils throughout the planet. Because of him, billions in the developing world avoided starvation (they probably only missed it by about a decade). Noyce invented the integrated circuit and founded Intel. He is the father of Silicon Valley, the digital revolution, and the Internet economy that connects the world.Both men owe their success to their farm roots in Iowa.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Learn how to get access to bonus episodes of History Unplugged (including a multi-part series on Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in WW2), the entire History Unplugged back catalogue, and even shout-outs at the end of each episode. Learn more by going to https://patreon.com/unpluggedSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happened to Jews after they were liberated from concentration camps? Some tried to return to their homes, only to find them occupied by neighbors who thought them dead and refused to give up their new dwellings. Others went on to build lives in the United States, but never truly found a place to call home. They wanted to tell their new compatriots about their experiences, but were silenced. “You’re in America now, put it behind you” is what they were told. Today I'm speaking with Jon Kean, director of the new documentary After Auschwitz, a “Post-Holocaust” documentary that follows six women after their liberation from Nazi concentration camps. The women Kean follows became mothers and wives with successful careers, but never fully healed from the scars of the past. His film captures what it means to move from tragedy and trauma towards life.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.